


Can music save your mortal soul / and can you teach me how to dance real slow?

by failsafe



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Bisexual Male Character, Bisexuality, Bonding, Didn't Know They Were Dating, Domestic, F/M, Friendship, M/M, Multi, Pre-Relationship, Road Trips, Slice of Life, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-03
Updated: 2014-07-03
Packaged: 2018-02-07 06:25:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1888377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/failsafe/pseuds/failsafe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes it's exciting, but sometimes life is best lived to a slow, steady beat.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Can music save your mortal soul / and can you teach me how to dance real slow?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sheeana](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sheeana/gifts).



> This story was written with a playlist in mind which is entirely optional but is as follows:
>
>> (i) american pie - don mclean (ii) ain't no sunshine - bill withers (iii) what's happening brother - marvin gaye (iv) heartache tonight - eagles (v) i want you to want me - cheap trick (vi) shake, rattle and roll - big joe turner (vii) go your own way - fleetwood mac (viii) i'm gonna make you love me - diana ross & the supremes and the temptations
> 
> The playlist is intended to be inclusive of music the author thinks Sam might listen to, and there are a few attempts at musical thematic elements, but it's not supposed to be heavy-handed or stressful to relate. Just hope you enjoy, and remember the playlist is optional!

Sam's bare feet touched against carpet that felt a lot like AstroTurf as he ascended the stairs with a small bucket of ice. His foot nearly caught a place where the carpet had begun to tear away at itself, in a long, thin line until it just stopped.

And here they were, at the end of their journey. At least for now. They were almost back to D.C., and Sam knew that his life was waiting on him back there. A paycheck and a house and a girl at the front desk he never had tried to talk to again. But there was also debris in the Potomac, and while Stark had thrown a lot of money at the clean-up, he'd heard, it seemed to him that there were some things you couldn't dredge away. The world seemed a little different now. 

He fished the key card from the waistband of his athletic shorts, swiping it into the handle and waiting for the sluggish light to turn green. Then he elbowed his way inside to find that Steve was still almost dutifully lying back along one of the beds, a look like consternation etched into his face. 

The music still played. About how the music wouldn't play, and Sam began to wonder about the wisdom of telling any kind of joke by putting a song on repeat when Steve maybe felt like he was running circles. 

Sometimes, on the better days, even in some place that seemed like ghosts lingered in it—especially for Steve—in Europe, it was easy to forget that it probably wasn't the best way to spend a summer. In the places where there had been ghosts, they hadn't found the one they were looking for. And instead, sometimes, Sam had found that they could still laugh with each other when Steve's heart was breaking. He wondered how you learned that trick. To keep letting your heart break without reaching in, grabbing hold of the hard part, and yanking at it like a last baby tooth. Slam the door and let it bleed. 

Then start again. Regrow, rebuild. Scar up and just wait it out until it was presentable enough to stomach taking your shirt off in front of people again. Though, judging by Steve's chest, it wouldn't detract too much in most people's eyes. And while Sam set the ice down and scooped some of it into two red, plastic cups to pour soda over, he wondered if that was really dangerous thinking. 

“So, anyway,” he said, a little too loudly as if Steve hadn't heard him come in. “It's about when Buddy Holly and some other dudes died. And everything that came after.” 

Truth was, Sam knew Steve couldn't give up. And he didn't want him to. But heading back home, regrouping—the trail had run cold, right back up to the rubble of the Triskelion. It was the only thing they could do. The best he could do was try to keep Steve cheerful, and sometimes the easiest way to do that was to think about little things. 

“What is?” Steve asked, sitting up against his elbow. He blinked a few times as if he'd been sleepier than he looked. Sam handed him a plastic cup and he took a sip in an automatic fashion. “The song?” 

“No, the—” Sam said, and he was looking for some completion of the smartass remark he was conjuring up, in due turn, but he didn't find one. He sat down on the edge of the bed across from Steve's, keeping his feet on the floor. He reached out to the corner of Steve's where he'd left his phone propped in the cradle of speakers, providing one of the only lights in the room. He paused the sound and the silence almost rang in his ears as it settled back down. “Yeah.” 

“Something else for me to put in my book,” Steve suggested mildly, adjusting his position again as Sam glanced down and watched bubbles burst in soda he rarely drank. 

“Nah, it's just... It was a joke. Kind of a bad joke, now that I think about it.” 

“Not the first one I've heard,” Steve said flatly, but Sam knew him better than to think he was irritated, even in the space that stretched out before he spoke again upon sitting up. “But why?” 

“I was just thinking about the chorus, more than the verses, when I left out of here to go get the ice,” Sam replied, shrugging. 

“I'm still not sure what you're apologizing for,” Steve admitted, and Sam glanced up to see his light eyebrows furrow. 

“I guess it just never occurred to me that... the day you—and the day he—died,” Sam said, allowing for Bucky, too. “The world starting changing then, too.” 

“I wasn't trying to save the world. I was trying to... save it. Save a lot of people, but,” Steve said, seeming to get tangled in his words. 

Sam took another sip of the soda in the cup and suddenly wished he was back at home for the first time in a while. He wished the soda was orange juice. 

“People who are trying to change the world usually don't do that great a job,” he commented, and he didn't think it was uncalled for. He'd seen a lot lately that seemed to support that statement. “It's... lives you try to change if you wanna make good in the world.” 

Steve smiled at him, and he said it before he thought too much. Before he thought enough. 

“And here you went and changed mine,” he said, warm and almost guilty. 

And Steve was still smiling and he had this stupid impulse to ask him to stay. Orange juice and Captain America. Orange juice and Steve Rogers and some kind of life, but he knew Steve couldn't ever stay and try to find what made him _happy_ when Bucky was still out there somewhere. Maybe that was just the beginning of the logistical problems, so Sam stood up, carrying partial cup of soda with him. 

“It's late,” he announced. 

“Sam,” Steve said, and he knew he wasn't getting away as easily as his chest had hoped. “Was it for the better? I never asked you. You've put yourself through... a lot... for me.” 

“Yeah. And I wouldn't have done a thing differently. Not for the world.” He pushed open the bathroom door and tipped what was left of the sugary soda into the sink. It ached at his teeth in a way he wasn't a big fan of. “Don't forget to brush your teeth. Wouldn't want your camera smile going just 'cause you're not planning on being on the news for a while.” 

He let the door fall shut and exhaled heavily at the mirror. He reached for his toothbrush and the tiny tube of hotel toothpaste. There was some advice in the way he was staring himself down. 

_Get over it, man. He's Captain America, and even if he was... Slam that door shut._

\- - - 

Counting on slipping away in the long shadows she had cast, finding a new place to hide and a new name, was an impossible to grasp dream. There had been a time when she would have been able to commit herself to vanishing as easily as she would have pulled a trigger to keep herself alive, but now finding her hesitation was just a matter of traveling far enough. She seemed to end up back in the same places. 

It was four hours between D.C. and New York by car, faster by other means, and there were a hundred diners and bars along the road between. The small kind that seemed stuck in time, smelling like freshly breathed twenty year old perfume and cigarette smoke that was never going to come out of the wood. She walked into those places more easily than some others to eat, to drink, to use the phone. The way she carried herself inside raised no attention out of the ordinary.

She couldn't wear her hair perfectly straight again for a while, so instead she ruffled her fingers through it again and again every few minutes when she found a place to rest her arm, to brace her hand high enough. A new mannerism, trying it on for size as she wandered back along creaking floorboards to the creaking door on the tight nook where an ancient, probably filthy payphone still hung bolted to the wall. She fished into the pocket of her loose, knit sweater for her phone. She shrugged a hood up a bit higher, bunched and not quite making it to cover the red crown of her head as she carefully brought the phone to her ear. The phone rang. 

“Hey,” came the voice at the other end, low and half-asleep. 

“Hey,” Natasha replied, soft click of her tongue. “You awake?” 

“Mm'now,” came the rest of the reply. 

“You used to be a lot better at that,” she remarked. 

“I'm gettin' old. Where are you?” 

“You know I can't tell you that.” 

“What'd you call me for?” 

“Wanted to know where you are,” she replied, knowing she sounded coy and committing to it. 

“Where you think? Not got a lot of... work lately,” complained the voice in her ear. 

“Clint,” she scolded softly. 

“So you dropping by? Didn't know you called ahead.” 

“Well, the last time I didn't, you chipped my nail polish.” 

“Oh. I'm sorry,” Clint said, and she couldn't tell if the earnestness was sincere—if he had fallen that far into self-pity—or if he just really didn't know how to keep up his end of this kind of conversation anymore. Mind control took a lot to get over, even without anything else crumbling beneath a person at the same time. “You bringing extra company?” 

“What makes you say that?” 

“News. I know you were in D.C. I can still read the Internet, you know. At the library.” 

“You looked me up at the library?” 

“Missed you and didn't have a number.” 

Again, Natasha couldn't tell if he was kidding or not. 

“I still can't believe you did that,” he answered her silence when she seemed to have skipped her turn. 

“I didn't have a choice,” Natasha said firmly, the nearest thing to an apology she was able to give him for it. 

“Not me I'm worried about. Wait. Wait, that came out wrong—” he started to apologize and she glanced aimlessly past the strip of amber light that beat against the dusty, faintly smudged glass pane in front of her. Then if Clint said anything else, Natasha couldn't focus on it as her mind filtered out anything that was less important than what was making her heart race. What was making her heart race with fear. 

“I gotta go,” she told him, quickly, and then hung up, depositing the phone into her sweater pocket without waiting a second more. She didn't want to act rashly, but her eyes scouted anything that she could use—and also looked for the glowing-red exit sign. For herself and because there were a handful of other late night travelers who weren't planning on getting killed this evening. 

When she approached the figure hunched at the bar—in big, ratty coat and hat pulled down over unwashed, uneven hair—she made no mistake about who it was. She had something deadly securely clutched in her left hand when she made it into his easy peripheral vision. And she'd seen his almost supernatural aim, focus, but she didn't feel it shift to her even as she tried to bait it, to let him know she knew he was there. He moved and the glint from his metal wrist caught her attention just slightly. 

All it did was reach up to aimlessly adjust the bill of the hat with very faintly whirring fingertips. 

And there it was—right in front of her. He wasn't moving, she didn't have to defend herself, and she was right there. She could disable him before he had a chance to do anything to anyone. She might even be able to spare him, to take him to Steve so he might one day forgive her—if the man he called Bucky lived. 

“What are you doing here?” she asked him, her voice low and with nothing to hide behind, no persona, no easy lie. 

He looked up, glancing at her and struggling to align his gaze with her eyes. She could see him hesitate, too—flinch? But she hadn't moved except for the faintest adjustment of her fingers. The way he moved, she could almost hear the whirring sound his arm made even when it was perfectly still. Everything about him seemed a little bit robotic. But then, she'd seen that before—a lot of different versions and a lot of different ways. 

She hadn't seen many of them come out of it. Not completely. She wasn't even sure about herself, sometimes. 

“I... remembered,” he said softly, and the sound grated in his throat like he hadn't spoken for a long, long time. Then he moved, and she couldn't resist her first instinct anymore. She moved fast and in a moment the sharp implement concealed, folded in her hand, pressed to a vulnerable point against the Winter Soldier's... strangely thin, pale neck—hollow around his veins. 

He didn't move and she heard her own deep, steady breath. Instead of defending himself, fighting her, giving her the movement she would have used to slash the blade, his eyes fell and she thought he looked almost ashamed. 

“I remembered...” he said, and then he lifted his hands—palms up and she recognized that as surrender. His blood stayed where it belonged. But then she saw the way his fingertips moved—the ones made of flesh and bone—as if they couldn't quite steady themselves. He was malnourished even though he sat with a bowl of something in front of him. She glanced at the milky soup and then remembered—something written at the front counter, the Daily Special. Something about it was disorienting, but the bowl looked like it'd been barely touched. 

“What are you doing here?” she pressed again. 

Then she noticed the way he gestured, side of metal hand pressing to the side of the natural one. She saw them draw a little closer, and it reminded her of a child. She'd never been around a lot of kids, but then she frowned just a little, glancing to his face every half-second to make sure she wasn't being fooled, wasn't underestimating him. Her heart wouldn't stop racing. But then she recognized—a book? 

“I remembered... and I couldn't find him. I couldn't find him, but I remembered... and I found you,” he said, turning to look at her—and she felt the blade slip against his skin enough that she had to flinch away but not without leaving a pink mark on his half-dry skin that would have to heal. 

\- - - 

Steve didn't know why they ended up at his place first. It seemed backwards, but maybe it was because one of the last times he'd been there, the last thing he'd noticed was broken glass and Fury, broken and bleeding on the floor. He knew it was better now—fixed, sanitized, the way they were trying to do with everything in the aftermath. But heading up the stairs, unloading the dull blue car that had felt more like steadiness, like home, than anything had in a while—back and forth across state lines in all directions, the Winter Soldier had (perhaps despite all odds) seemed to disappear on foot after all—it wasn't just the apartment that felt strange. 

He hesitated on the stairs, a hand touching the potentially deadly edge of his shield, the other clutching the handle of a suitcase. 

“You ever think maybe I've been traveling too heavy?” he asked during the pause. 

“I'm gonna start thinking it if you don't keep moving. Come on, runnin' man—walk,” came Sam's dry encouragement. Steve finished the stairs with a slight smirk and set his suitcase down by the door while he unlocked it. 

“Home sweet home,” he said, but he met Sam's eyes before he pushed open the door to let them both inside. He didn't know what he was expecting. What he got was a set of raised eyebrows and a smile that made him think of the thrill he got right before he jumped—the way it was understated, almost common to him now, but still pinched at his heartbeat and something in his throat. 

“This where we say goodnight? Where I—” Sam interrupted the silence. And Steve didn't know what he expected, but it wasn't what he got. “—give you a nice firm handshake or whatever it is you guys from the 40s do instead of—”

Steve waited, but Sam didn't seem like he was going to finish, so he made a little leap at pretending to interrupt. 

“No, you should come inside,” he offered quickly, holding the door open. 

There was a brightness in Sam's eyes, visible thought and Steve couldn't quite get a lock on what it was. A lot of things, but he wondered if relief and disappointment were parts of it. 

“Yeah, we can watch the game,” Sam said, and Steve could tell he was teasing as they both headed into the apartment, shield and two suitcases settling against furniture. “What's in season right now?” he asked, a little more genuinely curious as he picked up the television remote like it belong to him. 

“How should I know? I've only ever heard of baseball.”

“Since I met you, can't keep track of what time of year it is,” Sam said, and Steve almost automatically apologized but then he realized that it didn't sound like a complaint. It sounded amused, and he wandered over toward where Sam stood quietly. 

“I could—” he started to say, but the sound died in his throat. They both looked in toward the kitchen at about the same time and Steve glanced back at Sam, a little sheepishly. Sam started laughing softly, shaking his head, and Steve can't tell if it's nervous. 

“Man, what is that _smell_?” he asked, and Steve nearly shook his head and started laughing, too. But then something a little cold moved over him. It smelled a little... like something dying. Something dead. But it wasn't as bad as it ought to have been, if it'd been... But there were some things he didn't like to think about even in comparison. “Sorry,” Sam added quickly. “No offense, I just—you forget to take the trash out?” he offered, a little warily. 

“Don't think so,” Steve admitted, a bit seriously but then he met Sam's eyes and nodded for him to follow if he would. Sam was a Pararescue—he'd flown into worse than anything that could be waiting in Steve's kitchen. 

The smell of rotten vegetables was immediately identifiable when Steve rounded the corner, and even though it was unpleasant it made him want to take another breath—one of relief. He knew what other kinds of death smelled like, too well, and he'd known that wasn't the odor coming from the kitchen. But it was good to be completely, in every way, sure. 

That was the last moment of anything like relief he felt, though. 

First, there was a brief, suspended moment of stillness—confusion.

Then, as he felt Sam's presence move alongside him, he knelt down toward the floor with a frown on his face. 

The first two cans were there right beneath him, a trail of viscous, formerly sweet liquid spilled from the one labeled _'Sweet Yellow Corn'_ and something even less pleasant from the one labeled _'Green Beans.'_ Steve's fingers touched down like he needed to feel that it was real, coming back faintly sticky and immediately giving him the inclination that the ought to wash his hands. But not yet. Fingertips dragging along the floor, neither deliberately avoiding or touching through the short trail of corn remains, served as a guide for Steve's eyes. Out from his fingertips, along the narrow kitchen floor, there were more cans. All of them vegetables. His frown deepened.

He glanced up and the cupboard was still open. One can remained on the edge of the counter, and he couldn't tell if it'd been opened or not. 

His hand reached out and a shadow moved down beside him. But it wasn't just a shadow, and Sam was warm and attentive. He could almost feel the way his frown wouldn't settle, that there was an upward turn to his lips before he spoke, without ever looking at him. He glanced at him anyway as his hand closed around the aluminum of one can. Sam didn't say anything, just made some visible effort to relax the furrow of his eyebrows. 

Steve checked another of the cans and the second he examined yielded a more obvious conclusion. 

Two deep gouges side by side, puncture wounds in metal. A third across the destroyed lid's diameter. They were holds, and efficient and round, but not like bullet holes. Not like holes driven by tools. There were tiny splinters of metal sticking up like eraser shavings from mistakes in the desperation or stubbornness that had torn into the metal relentlessly. 

There was only one possible explanation for the scene in front of him. Only one person who could have been here, and—

“He was here,” Steve said aloud. 

“And hungry,” Sam said, and Steve couldn't hear his tone for the pounding in his ears. 

“Don't—” he said in turn, and it was the first time he could remember really, genuinely being ready to snap at Sam. Ever. About anything. “Don't joke around about it,” he said, not able to find the follow-through to make it sound harsh. It was Sam. 

“I'm not,” Sam assured him, and that time he heard it—the tone. When he exhaled, some of the drumming in his head was gone. And it was just unnervingly quiet again. 

“He was here,” he repeated, to fill it. 

“And hungry,” Sam repeated. “He found your place and... knew he could have your food.” 

Sam didn't sound as convinced as Steve might have liked, but he sounded sincere.

“Where did he _go_? Where would he go?” Steve asked, just voicing the things that caught in his throat as voiceless, impossible questions most of the time. Most of the time, they had nothing to base answers on. Nothing new. 

“My guess? Looking for you when you weren't home,” Sam replied. Steve thought he sensed some uneasiness in that answer, like Bucky made Sam nervous. He couldn't really blame him, but it rubbed something in him the wrong way. 

Abruptly, Steve leaned forward and gathered the strewn cans closer to himself. Most of them were empty but not cleaned of their residue. Some were half-finished—the ones that showed half-attached tops, botched attempts and tearing out the lid altogether. Seeing it, understanding it—the lengths he'd gone to, standing in a kitchen all on his own, confused and lost or angry and alone, just to feed himself—Steve was the closest he'd been to his best friend in months of searching. He could see the way he'd been desperate—like an animal, or a soldier on the ropes remembering suddenly that he was human, that he was going to die if he _didn't_ —

He heard the cans rattle and ding as he gathered them together and rolled them, misshapen, into a pile just before his knees. He did it quickly, efficiently, even though he felt that rattling in his bones and tight between this teeth. 

“Whoa, man,” Sam discouraged at his side, but he has to. “Slow down,” came another gentle order.

Sam was on his feet, and Steve wondered if he had given up on trying to reason with him. If he'd slipped so far backward in time that he'd lost his first _normal_ friend. His first shot in a long time at— 

At what? In front of him, he kept focusing on the cans and the remains of half-worn down energy, plant matter, and he'd never been one for sciences over art but the terms occurred to him in fragments when Sam knelt back down beside him with a different kind of crunchy, rattling noise of a plastic supermarket bag ballooning open. 

“We've got this,” Sam interjected again, reaching out and commandeering one of the cans. He took his time placing it into the bag. He waited, watching, until Steve looked at him. Steve took a deep breath and nodded, but his movements were still too fast, too desperate. Like he might finish early and run out the door, catch up with Bucky before the trail went cold again. But then the rattling inside of him sharpened and then went quiet when he felt a subtle, insistent, building sting. 

Instinctively, he paused, holding his hand up to the yellow light in the room. As he did, a tiny line bloomed red, no less easily than when he'd weighed 90 pounds. 

Sam turned his attention to Steve even while he finished putting the last couple of cans into the bag. 

It only burned a little, stung a little, and it was tiny. And somehow the little cut served to anchor Steve to reality. That more than just distant metal cut and bruised. 

Another deep breath and Steve managed to really look Sam in the eye before he stood up. 

“You really don't have to do this,” he assured him as he found an upright roll of paper towels pushed to the back of the counter. He handed it down to Sam as he got an answer. 

“Already started.” 

Beneath the sink in the closed cupboard, Steve found some cleaning solution and he took a thickened pad of a few paper towels and cleaned up the residue. Sam followed with dry towels, and in just a few moments—silent, scrubbing, faintly echoing—the floor looked clean. Clean as it would be for someone who hadn't been home in months. 

When they were finished and had tucked used paper into the supermarket bag too, tying it off, Steve noticed Sam still glancing at the tiny cut on the side of his finger. 

“It'll be fine in a couple of hours,” Steve promised, and if it were any exaggeration it wasn't by much. “Doesn't even hurt,” he added. And it didn't.

“I've got this,” Sam said softly, and he reached for Steve's hands. Both of them, it seemed, but both Sam's grasped to either side of Steve's slightly wounded one. He felt the grasping warm down into the small bones and sinew that made up his fingers. They stood together, and Steve didn't question as he was led over to the sink. It was only there that Sam let go of his hand. He watched as Sam began to adjust the tap, leaning forward against his elbows slightly as he checked the temperature twice. 

“This way you know he's alive,” Sam said when the water was warm enough. He reached for Steve's hand again, drawing it under the gentle flow. The blue dish soap spilled onto Steve's fingers under the direction of one of Sams' dripping hands. Steve just watched—and felt, soft palms and callouses around his fingertips. They slipped and moved and worked. The tiny cut stung a little deeper and settled into a calm. 

“And hungry,” Steve echoed, a small apology for the way he'd dismissed what Sam was trying to say. He thought he understood. 

“You must be,” Sam said, offering him an out in the topic. He had fished a towel from the drawer at hand, as if he had been there a hundred times. Well, maybe there had been some groping around for where things were, but it was hard for Steve to focus on that above the absolute kindness of the touch.

“Not really,” Steve said, trying to find his normal dry response. “I've got a nose, too.” 

“Then let's go for a walk,” Sam said, and his thumb was working a circle over the back of Steve's hand, only the barrier of soft cloth between their skin.

Outside, it was dark but the streetlamps burned. There were bugs still flitting through the air but the air was cool.

Steve walked in step with Sam. He didn't make note of the time, but as he breathed he took note of the smell. There was a spiciness in the air—a lot more pleasant but another sign of decay. 

And Steve remembered something from earlier as he glanced over, catching the brightness of the eyes that met his in the too-orange glow of a particular streetlamp. Sam kept losing track of time, he'd said. 

Steve did too, but that was when he noticed that it was fall. 

\- - - 

Natasha wondered sometimes if she was very brave. It felt brave, sitting in a car with a man who'd nearly killed her. A man who'd shot her twice. With only the space for a gearshift, an emergency brake, and cup holders between them.

It'd taken her a while to end up there. It'd been something like a stand-off—with herself and with the Winter Soldier. But he hadn't put up much of a fight or an argument. He hadn't made demands apart from a few alarmingly childish outbursts—none of which had actually threatened her. He just explained himself over and over and in fragments when he spoke. But most of the time he didn't. The largest conflict had been with herself. 

She wasn't the kind to stick her neck out when it wasn't necessary. She'd take her life into her hands when it meant taking it back from someone else's, but having _options_ —that was different. And rare. 

She could have run away. And this time—the Winter Soldier whose appointed targets had never escaped before, and perhaps she still hadn't—she thought he might let her. He looked down at his own hands, staring like he couldn't bear the sight of them, more than he looked level with the horizon. She didn't think he chased people anymore. He looked for people, and he looked for them in vain. He kept looking for them in his hands, and she had never asked and he'd never said, but she thought he was looking for them in the blood she knew he still felt and saw on them. Remembered. 

She did wonder, curiously, quietly, in a way she'd never ask about, how he remembered _them_. 

She didn't know why she hadn't run away. She also didn't know why he didn't talk more than he did. She didn't know if he couldn't or if he wouldn't. But she hadn't been much of a conversationalist, either. 

She glanced over at him as she drove. 

On the way across the car, her gaze cast down toward the cup holders. It seemed entirely out of place that they were occupied by two see-through plastic, dome-topped cups with large red straws protruding from their open mouths. So many rivers of blood that could have filled this car, if they'd been honest, but instead there were two cups of crushed ice, sweet and red and blue. She didn't know why she'd given him the blue one. She got cherry for herself because it was red and because it tasted faintly of lipstick for a day when she didn't have to wear any. And maybe she'd gotten him blue because blue was the color that reminded her of Steve. Maybe it would remind him, too. But maybe that was wrong and why two thirds of the slush were melting.

She kept doing things like that. Stopping at convenience stores that dotted loops of road that briefly diverted them from the interstate, for gas and more often than was necessary. They hadn't taken a direct route home. She'd still been testing him, she thought. She'd still been giving herself a chance to run, to think. There were things she had to do first. Most of them—it didn't matter where. But in the convenience markets—sometimes Bucky would follow her inside. Sometimes he wouldn't, and she kept glancing out the walls made of window that seemed like an absurd security flaw for such remote, money-filled places to have. But each time something caught her eye—flashing lights of a claw machine in too honest a tiny town to be rigged (and flashing lights looked like those from sirens), a long row of twelve varieties of stuffed crackers (all tasting the same, like field rations doused in herbs, and she wondered how they'd fed him), and slushes the color of lipstick and blood (of Steve's clothes and some shining, distant concept of honor). 

She bought things for Bucky. Cheap things. Small things. All from those little convenience markets before they stopped someplace for the night, for the day, for a strange afternoon beneath an old, red-stained, splintering picnic pavilion. The slushes were just the latest in a long line of connect-the-dots attempts to see if he reacted to anything, if something made him smile, if something made him bearably afraid or annoyed or uncomfortable. If something made him feel human. 

She didn't know what she was doing. If she'd had a conversation with an adult since she'd picked Bucky up and agreed (with herself) to doing this, she'd have admitted that first thing. And she'd realized, at some point, that maybe this would be what she was if she were a mother—that she was treating Bucky like a child. But he never complained, and sometimes he met her eyes with a sparking kind of alarm that didn't frighten her. It looked like confused, forgotten surprise, and she knew it was when she was being kind. He'd had so little through the years that hers was enough. 

If all of this had been a mistake, she knew she had tried her best. She looked at Bucky, across the car, and knew that he was someone who needed a chance. And she wasn't the person who gave chances. She took them and she was given them. But she had never known how to give one before. She wasn't brave, she was trying to pay her debts.

The moon was bright and almost blinding as they drove into DC. Another glance at Bucky told Natasha that he was as docile as he'd been before—that the memory of chasing her down through the streets here hadn't triggered anything, if he had it. Her pace was slow, foot barely compressing the gas—nothing like her preferred style of driving but slow in a way that gained no attention. This time of night in DC there were very few cars. 

She had a decision to make. Show up on Steve's doorstep. _'Here you go, big fella. Look what I found. Safe and sound and all yours.'_

But she couldn't do that to him. She'd seen—while losing a lot of blood, but she hadn't been able to help seeing—the way the vacant expression in Bucky's eyes had made Steve adopt the same. How it'd almost destroyed something in a man whose spirit was apparently indestructible. 

And so the decision she made was to pull into a motel parking lot. The neon light that formed the vacant sign glowed an annoying shade of pink down into the car and she glanced at the time on the dash. She pushed the gearshift and put the car into park. The singular key chain rattled a little as it swung back and forth. The key wasn't attached to anything else. 

“Big day coming up,” she said to him, just to give him a moment to get used to someone speaking before she had to take him into the little front office with her. When it was dark, she tried to never leave him alone. People like her were even more trained and accustomed to moving through the dark. 

His mouth hung open for an extended moment before he nodded and pressed his lips back together. 

Natasha tilted her head so low that her ear might have touched the steering wheel, casually showing curiosity in a way that he would see, trying to prompt him to continue with something resembling real body language. 

“For the m—” Bucky said, and he sounded resigned and a little afraid. Natasha interrupted him before he could get the word out. 

“No!” she said firmly, but that was too much like scolding. “No,” she said, smoothing out her voice to grab hold of some sweetness to make up for it. “No mission,” she confirmed what she knew was going through his mind. “No—” she started to continue, but then she sighed heavily. “Nothing like that.” 

It wasn't the time to explain. 

She considered him in the low, irregular, pink and street-light. His hair was a mess. Cleaner, neater, but tangled because it hadn't been brushed in more than a day. 

Without a word, Natasha reached down into the recess just behind the half-melted slushes and fished around until she found a round, cloth-covered elastic. She opened her door, pushing it out with her elbow, pocketing the key with the opposite hand. Then she was around the car, sliding—knees first and staying on her knees—into the backseat. 

“Just a minute,” she instructed him. She tilted at her waist and fished through the outer pocket on one of the bags in the backseat. Out came a black, paddle hairbrush. She sat up to full knee-height, head tilting forward because the crown of it touched the car's ceiling. She looked at the top of Bucky's head over the headrest and smiled, glancing to meet his eyes in the rear-view mirror. 

He cooperated. 

“What are you doing?” he asked softly, articulately in a way that was surprising with how little he spoke. 

“Just prettying you up a little. Might get us a discount on the room if we both look presentable,” she said dryly. She watched his face as she gathered his hair all back into her reach. She waited for the slight curve of his lips, and if there was some sadness there she couldn't help it. At least he smiled and it hadn't been entirely the wrong thing to say. 

Satisfied enough, she slowly began to brush his hair. When the capped bristles rubbed against his scalp, she heard a soft, clearing sound in his throat. She knew he wasn't used to being touched, so she took her time in gathering his hair into a ponytail—and a bit higher. She was patient, careful not to pull, as she looped the elastic into a figure-eight and pulled his hair through again. 

The last thing they needed was for someone to recognize him. 

“How will this help our objective?” Bucky asked, and the articulate tone faltered a little with the last two words.

“Amazing what a little change in your hair can do,” Natasha said carefully after a second's consideration. He didn't need to know her real concern. 

“Change,” Bucky repeated, and she knew he wanted her to explain. And if it wasn't going to kill her, why should she deny him that? He so rarely wanted to talk about anything. Satisfied that the hair was secure, she stopped attending to the tie and messed with a few of the strands, making it look deliberately a bit messy. 

“It's important that we not draw too much attention to ourselves. We don't want people to think we're here to cause trouble. … We're not,” she explained. “Someone might—” she added carefully, and she fell into silence when he took advantage of the pause. 

“You're afraid they might recognize me. The Winter Soldier,” he said. 

And it was strange—he seemed to understand tactical decisions, mechanical ones, the operation of most machines. But he didn't seem to have an understanding of himself anymore. 

It was strange, but Natasha knew. 

“Yeah,” she said, her voice thick in her throat. 

“No one remembers me,” Bucky explained. “No one sees me,” he insisted. There was a breathlessness to it. He was afraid that they _did_ , not that they didn't. She ruffled his hair a little, to let him know that it was okay, before she dropped her hand down. 

“They do now,” she said, tone dipping down into a more minor key, but her smile returned a little bit. She couldn't help it. 

Mornings came and a few of them dragged into others, multiplied. Natasha went out early and bought coffee and sometimes she gave Bucky different kinds of tea instead—more experiments in humanity. He'd been the victim of that for so many years, but these experiments were with an entirely different intent. That had to matter. 

She gave him things to read. Sometimes they were supposed to be funny, other times colorful, slick, picture-filled travel pamphlets. He seemed to pore over those. Then they got thicker, whole books. He'd gotten through two of those, sometimes even daring to venture out to sit by the pathetic, sickly palm in a rectangular planter by the swimming pool, before she made her way to the first place she knew to begin looking. 

She could have found Steve in a lot of ways. She was good at that. But she had to do this the slow way, the easy way, because she didn't know what she was going to say. 

She was almost to the door of the brick building where Sam worked, expecting that she'd be able to find some information there. She just had a feeling. Then she nearly turned back, right on the balls of her feet, pirouetting and bounding off the curb to go anywhere else. To reconsider. But then she narrowed her eyes, peering through the glass pane of the door and she saw him, walking fast by the front desk in khaki pants. 

She let herself in, feeling like her arms weren't nearly as competent as they ought to have been with the door. 

“Sam!” she called out before he could make it to the end of the hall and turn. 

His whole frame jostled a little, as if he'd forgotten that he couldn't just take flight as part of turning around. She could see the recognition of her voice before he had time to focus his eyes on hers and return back down the length of the hall. 

“Oh, hey there...” he said, and she heard the hesitant sound sound his tongue nearly directed from the roof of his mouth. _'Natasha.'_ But he didn't say it when he came within conversation distance of her. She was surprised at the sensitivity. His eyebrows remained pushed a little higher on his forehead than they should have been, but his glance toward the front desk was discreet, not nervous. 

“What's the matter? Forget my name already?” she asked, smiling sweetly and a little teasingly. Letting him know that he didn't have to use any pseudonym for her. Not this time. 

“No,” he replied, and she could hear the way he was pleased with himself. Probably for not using her name, again. “... What brings you... here?” he asked, looking up and around indicatively. 

Natasha considered carrying on the pleasantries, about joking, but then she realized that she was withholding vital, valuable information. She couldn't afford to keep doing it forever. Not when she trusted Steve the way she did, when she wanted him to continue trusting her. She reached out for Sam's forearm, gripping just a bit firmly. She glanced for an open door and found instead an open archway to an empty space. She directed him into the corner so the sound of their voices wouldn't echo recklessly. 

“Hey, now. Didn't realize—” Sam was teasing wryly, nervously. She could hear the vague, joking innuendo and she only answered it with another smirk once they were still again. 

“I thought you might know where I could find Steve,” she said, getting straight to the point. She watched his eyes. Sam blinked at her a couple of times. 

“What makes you think I know?” he asked, and she knew that it was more a philosophical question than one born from ignorance. She knew he was getting at something. Genuine concern, mostly. 

Natasha cocked her head a little and kept peering at his eyes. He didn't budge—not on the topic, his arms folded across his chest and he smiled a bit more by the measure of a few teeth. 

“Let's call it a hunch,” Natasha said, righting the tilt of her head and lifting her own eyebrows. His arms unfolded and he started to shrug. 

“Oh, I see. Been... spying,” he said, careful with his inflection. 

Natasha shook her head and smiled enough that a soft chuckle escaped. 

“No. Nothing you can't do. I saw.” 

“You eavesdropped you mean.” 

“Maybe, a little,” she said, whether she agreed or not. 

“You tried looking for him before you came to me?” Sam asked, reaching up to rub around the edge of his short, groomed facial hair. 

“No,” Natasha said with a soft shake of her head. “I came to you first. It seemed... appropriate.” 

“You need my permission to approach the Captain,” Sam said in what seemed like a teetering attempt at a joke. 

“I just thought that it might be best to ask someone who's important to him. A friend,” Natasha explained—actually in earnest. 

“You're his friend,” Sam said, nodding toward her a bit deeply. 

“It's different,” Natasha replied without hesitation. 

“Oh,” Sam said, and there was some kind of understanding that he seemed to be implying that she hadn't intended. And despite all that she knew about people, she just felt a little tension in her chest, like a loop pulling hard around her. She didn't know how to correct it. The silence stretched out for a second too long before Sam cleared his throat and rubbed at the side of his nose, out from the corner of his eye, before dropping his hands down. “Yeah, he's... working.” 

“Working?” Natasha prompted, to make the conversation a little easier (and because it surprised her). 

“Yeah,” Sam said, and he glanced down. She read what looked almost like guilt. Her eyebrows lifted a little higher, but that didn't mean she understood where it was coming from. A smile tugged a bit harder at her lips, right along with that tension in her chest—marionette strings. She should know better than to get attached to people. 

“Sam?” she asked, and if she sounded uneasy, she told herself that it wasn't real. It was just what she was supposed to be. A friend. 

It was real. There'd have been no reason for the quicker beating in her chest if it hadn't been. The nervous dread. What became of him—of them—when she wasn't looking, it was starting to feel like her responsibility. That hadn't been part of any plan she'd ever made. 

“Well, for a while we... looked for him, you know?” Sam said, prompting a nod. She didn't have to ask who he was talking about. She folded her arms briefly, shifting her weight a little, casually. “Then we got back here. I needed to come back to work, and I guess for a little while with the whole... SHIELD thing... Steve's pension or salary or whatever you call it got held up. We were both running out of funds, and I could just tell he was tired. I knew he knew people he could ask for money, know he still does, but I tried to keep his eyes off the prize a little bit. He was just wearing himself out, and I... convinced him. To stick around for a little while.” 

“You did?” Natasha asked, warmly. Sam's gaze was hesitant, head inching back a little with a slight craning of his neck. 

“Yeah, I guess,” he said. 

“You're a good friend,” she said. “Good for him,” she added. 

“Oh, careful. I might have to go find a tissue,” Sam said dryly. 

“I mean it,” she told him. “What's he doing? Construction, flag-making by hand?” 

“You'd think,” Sam said with a laugh that surprised her. “Nah, he's working with kids at a school down by the river. Think he thought they'd need it as much as any of them. He's been working with an after-school program. As you could guess, he didn't really have to go through the full application process. Few raised eyebrows, maybe, but everybody in this town knows he saved them, 'spite of the damage.” 

“It's good that they do,” Natasha agreed, and she sounded more distracted than she was. 

“You want me to go call him? Tell him you're in town?” 

Natasha shook her head and then paused again, looking up at Sam. It was a slightly strange offer of help. 

“There a reason I shouldn't call him?” she asked, half-teasing. 

“Oh, no!” Sam said quickly. “Just thought it might be a little faster this way.” 

“I'm not in a hurry.” 

“You're staying?” 

“Maybe,” Natasha allowed. “You got a number I could have for him?” 

“Absolutely,” Sam said, emphasizing each syllable just a little more than was necessary as he took out his cellphone and quickly thumbed his way through his contacts. 

“Not got it memorized by heart?” she asked. 

“It's in my hand,” he replied drolly. 

“That bad, huh?” 

“Uh-huh,” he said, and then he handed her his phone without hesitation. 

The picture of Steve that made up the contact back-splash featured a smile that made Natasha glance up at Sam's face again. It was bright, sloppy, and almost drunken. Steve couldn't get drunk. She smiled tightly enough that it ached a little and she bit at her lip to try and shrink it down. She couldn't tell where the picture had been taken without closer observation. It was dark and the flash had lit up some sweat on Steve's skin. He was wearing shorts that she'd never seen Steve wear any like before. He'd always been a slacks and trousers kind of guy—pants even when he ran. He sat on blacktop edged by yellowing grass, a white painted line running along to his left. He looked up at the cameraman—Sam—and his eyebrows were doing something that tried to glare but couldn't hope to begin. 

Apparently her upward glance had acted as some kind of invitation because Sam was leaning forward, tiptoeing just a little unnecessarily. With another glance, he rocked back again. 

“Spending a lot of time with him?” she asked, since some mutual nosiness seemed almost acceptable. 

“Keeping him company,” Sam agreed, the fingers of one of his hands fishing for one of his pants pockets. 

“That's good,” she said. 

“So you didn't keep his number? Didn't keep up with it, I mean. Think you texted him, the day we met.” 

“Had to get a new phone,” Natasha said. A common plight, and it was amazing how normal their conversation could manage to sound. 

“Right. Right,” Sam said, the second time with more emphasis. He nodded after he'd gone quiet again. 

Natasha's hand moved smoothly to flip Sam's phone over in her hand, offering it back to him. Her fingers were a little slow letting go and she felt the slow care in his hands, competent and agile but in an entirely different way, a little thicker. 

“Don't tell him I'm here, okay?” she requested as she moved to walk back the way she'd come, past him. She moved slowly, knowing that wouldn't quite be the end of it. 

“Wait a minute. So this some secret? Secret or a surprise?” Sam challenged, turning to find her with his eyes before she got away. She obligingly paused, facing him. She shrugged. 

“Just a way to keep him safe,” she replied after watching Sam's eyes, considering her options again. 

“Safe,” Sam repeated. “So am I in any kind of danger?” 

“Not if you don't tell him,” Natasha said with a smirk, but the tightening of Sam's brows told her that the joke wasn't entirely appreciated. “No,” she amended quickly. 

“Good,” Sam said, and for a moment he was so outwardly complacent, working his phone back into his pocket, that she thought the conversation was over. It was only when she moved to go that he snapped his gaze back up before she could get away, almost startling her. Almost. “I'm not doing anything he's gonna regret, am I?” he asked her. 

Again the strings wrapping around and within her chest tightened, but Natasha shook her head. No matter how much it stung—more than a little bit—she shook her head. 

“Didn't think so,” he said, and that made Natasha exhale evenly. Then she walked over to him, even though it was hard to disguise as anything but coming back to him for its own sake. She reached out, squeezing his arm just beneath his shoulder. 

“You're good for him,” she repeated. “I'll let you get back to work.” 

She patted his arm as she let it go and left. 

\- - -

To call it guilt when he saw Steve that afternoon, when he didn't tell him, might have been an overstatement. It might have been an understatement, too, but he'd seen the way Natasha looked at him. At Steve, though he'd seen the way Natasha looked at him, too. It was confusing, but he guessed that was her job. 

“How was work?” he asked dryly. 

“Broke up a fight,” Steve said as he jogged down the steps to meet him on the sidewalk. 

“You're good at that.” 

“Not really,” Steve insisted with a shake of his head, smile forming little lines at the corners of his eyes. 

“You're Captain America.” 

“I'm not supposed to break up fights. Supposed to finish them, right?” 

“'Blessed are the peacemakers,'” Sam said, not quite irreverently. He was smiling, though, as they started to wander down the sidewalk, side by side, just a few inches apart. “Even if they do fight with a shield.” 

“That's good, Reverend Wilson,” Steve said, levelly watching Sam's eyes until he smiled and breaking into one of his own when he did. It surprised Sam, a little, but not much. Enough to make him laugh. 

“Thanks. Try me again after Christmas.” 

“It's not the best PR strategy these days,” Steve said, picking up the previous line of thought as he looked wistfully out toward the Potomac. In a lot of ways, it was as if nothing had changed. 

“Come on, man. Everybody knows you're a soldier, but they also now you saved them. That you stopped every fight you could. That's what you do,” Sam said with a vague, encompassing gesture of his hand. 

Steve's hands went down into his jacket's pockets as they walked, and Sam watched him while Steve briefly watched his feet. He knew something was coming, one of those things that it took Steve an age to work up the nerve to say. 

“Part of me didn't want to do it,” he admitted. 

Sam drew in a deep breath, brow furrowing with consternation as he considered it. His gaze made its way forward again, watching where they were going. 

“What do you mean by that?” he prompted, careful not to sound put off by it. He wasn't. He'd heard much, much worse from people. From himself on bad days. The kinds of things a person brought back with them, the kinds of things a person could carry around—not many of them were pretty. 

“I just... knew how much I woulda hated it,” Steve replied, and Sam heard the way his tone warmed. He resisted it for a fraction of a second, but he couldn't help looking at him again. It hadn't been the worst thing he could've said. Not even close. Sam was a little perplexed, but it was a hopeful kind of perplexed—the kind he wanted answered and that made him feel lighter in the chest. 

“Yeah?” he prompted Steve further. 

“I didn't like it when people got in the way of my fights. I wanted to hold my own. Didn't want to look weak or scared. Even when Bucky—” Steve explained, but then he faltered and went quiet. 

Sam walked in silence as they arrived at his car. The jangle of keys echoed a little and the doors unlocked. He waited a moment before he opened his and touched the roof. 

“This is a story about how he tried to protect you, not one about him trying to beat you up—” Sam prompted, and he could see that the very insinuation tightened something in Steve's jaw, in his back teeth, but it wasn't anger. Sam knew that. 

“Yeah,” Steve said, and his hand was clenched into a loose fist when Sam saw it touch, sideways, down to the roof of the car. Gently. 

“Good,” Sam said with a nod. 

Steve nodded in turn and blinked once extra as he opened the door on the passenger's side. That was the end of the story. 

It wasn't every night that they ate dinner together. Giving Steve a ride home was a pretty regular occurrence. Sam knew that he could walk home, run home hardly breaking a sweat, but it wasn't about that. Habits made a home, and Sam just thought that Steve could really use one for a while. So most days, he went and got him from work. 

Today it felt different. It wasn't just that he had a secret to keep and he was mulling over whether or not it was actually a secret. It was more the way Steve reached down and tugged at the lever, reclining the seat by one notch and fixed his gaze forward. He acted like his arm weighed about a thousand pounds when he reached up and adjusted the visor, breath drawing way down deep in his lungs. 

“Okay, looks like a pizza night,” Sam announced. Steve didn't object, so Sam put the car in gear and drove to one of the pizza places he frequented. It seemed like Steve only really noticed when Sam put the car in park again, his hand brushing over the button on the seat belt. “'less there's something you'd prefer?” 

“Nah, pizza's... good,” Steve said. He cracked open the door and pushed it outward with his elbow. Sam thought he was going to keep on going and felt the awkward tension settle into his chest preemptively. It was still worth it. He knew Steve shouldn't face those nights when he was beating himself up on his own. Especially not those nights. But then Steve settled back a little again and looked at him across the car. He relaxed his shoulders, keys jangling in his fingers while Steve exhaled. “You know you can't get me drunk?” 

Sam wasn't sure what prompted the sudden disclosure of information. He'd seen Steve drink before. In front of people they'd contacted, wine with certain kinds of food, rarely, but then he realized he'd never seen him _drink_. It'd never occurred to him that it was because he couldn't get drunk. Taking it in, he immediately nodded. Then he grinned. 

“Yeah, I know,” he said. He did now. “So the pizza and beer thing only works for you about 50/50,” he observed, cracking open his own door. 

“Well the half that works is probably good for you. I get grumpy when I'm hungry,” Steve said with a smile that Sam recognized as the one he gave that meant he was sad. There wasn't another word for it, and Sam wanted to be the one to fix it. Just about more than anything. 

“Yeah, well. Let's go fix that,” he said, and he opted to lead the way in getting out of the car. 

In the restaurant, they sat at a table with a bright, almost bare-bulb treatment kind of lamp over them. At least he couldn't complain about not being able to see their food. To his surprise, Steve did seem to perk up just a little as he ate, fingers handling the slices of pizza deftly. 

“This is another thing I like about this time period,” Steve said casually. 

“Yeah, what's that?” Sam asked, a little eager. 

“Pizza's everywhere and I can afford it,” he replied, voice still a lot more bright than Sam would have expected to get out of just feeding him. Maybe breaking up fights between five and six year olds took more out of him than he imagined. More than one way for something to wear a person out. “Was better in New York, though,” he added, calmly, smirking just a little. 

“Oh, you're gonna play like that. Man who's buying you dinner. Shoulda flown you to New York for the evening. Sorry, my wing suit got busted,” Sam said, shaking his head and laughing. 

“I'm fine. I'm... happy. Right here,” Steve replied, emphasizing each thought. Maybe it was a little clumsy, but it was that clumsiness that always made Sam believe him. He could give speeches without a second thought when lives depended on it, but when he was just talking it was like this. 

“You're really happy, though?” Sam asked, taking a deep sip of his drink, feeling the bubbles of the Coke pop on his tongue as they spilled from the straw. There were two emptied beer bottles, both on his side of the table, but he'd decided that was enough. 

“Yeah,” Steve said, picking at a last piece of pizza. He took his time, chewing, so rarely rude in any way that wasn't his smart mouth. He met Sam's eyes as he swallowed, and it was only then that Sam realized how closely he'd been watching him. He glanced down, briefly shy, but it didn't last long. 

“Yeah?” he pushed a little. 

“That's part of the problem. Feel like I'm getting too... comfortable,” Steve explained. 

“That's what you're supposed to do,” Sam informed him, though he knew the reasons for his reservations.

“How can I be when—”

Sam wasn't opposed to interrupting when he needed to, so he jumped in. He decided he was full and inched his plate away while Steve spoke, but before he could finish his hand moved—loose imitation of a fist—across the surface of the table. His knuckles briefly met, briefly knocked the side of Steve's hand. 

“You're not giving up looking,” he said, voice low and warm as he shook his head. “You're not. But when you find him, he's gonna need his buddy back. He's gonna need Steve Rogers, whole and... _good_ ,” he said, and he meant the state of being, not the quality. There was no one on Earth who knew a thing about Steve Rogers who didn't think he was _good_ that way. 

“Sounds nice,” Steve agreed, and Sam didn't think it was an argument even though it sounded a little rough in his throat. The corners of his mouth weren't entirely neutral and they weren't slanting into a hard line. “But how do I... justify...” 

“You don't have to justify anything to anyone. You're... one of the most just people I know, and you've got some of the biggest reasons not to be,” Sam insisted when Steve trailed off on his own this time. “And you never know, maybe he's gonna show up again. Missed him once. Maybe he'll find his way back home.” 

“Think that sounds a little optimistic,” Steve said, taking a deep drink from his glass that Sam knew meant he wanted to get moving again. Not a bad idea. Sam fished his billfold out from his khaki pocket and left a tip for their waitress and handed a card to the woman at the register, signing the receipt sloppily so he could catch step with Steve before something changed. It felt like the air was almost comfortable, and it seemed like the kind of thing he needed to keep chasing, needed to keep a handle on, for Steve's sake. For his sake, too, but he didn't think that was a bad thing. Not lately. 

Moving fast, almost skipping a step, Sam realized that maybe he'd had his couple of beers a little fast. Just a little. Or maybe it just hadn't been an hour, and not everyone had Steve Rogers' metabolism. When he felt the ambient heat of Steve's arm at his side, he let his own arm brush the soft leather. 

“You mind if we check out the local color? Think I gotta walk for a while before I'm clear to get behind the wheel,” Sam suggested, then just in case he was being presumptuous added: “'less you'd like to be Designated Driver, but that'd mean staying at my place, I guess.” 

On second thought, maybe it was a bad idea to talk for a couple of minutes as whatever this was worked its way through his bloodstream. He didn't think of himself as a lightweight. But then, Steve just laughed, and he laughed, and maybe it wasn't that bad. 

“I can walk,” Steve agreed easily. 

“Congratulations. I'm not that messed up. Just need a few minutes,” Sam assured Steve with a small narrowing of his eyes, but his breath caught even when he tried not to laugh. It felt like that kind of night. 

Along the sidewalk, they came upon a lot of storefronts. Some of them were closed, for the night or permanently. There were drying planters and cracks in the pavement and Sam wondered if he was standing too close to Steve until his attention was caught by the sound coming from a cracked open door. It was late enough in the year that it struck him as a little weird, and then he noticed the funny drawing of a saxophone lining the slick black board with neon marker smudge across it in mostly green and orange. But the sound—the music—it was the biggest draw of the place and the cracked door seemed really inviting. 

“Wanna step inside?” he asked Steve, his smirk just a little knowing. The music seemed like a little bit of a time warp but just the kind he liked. “Continue your cultural education.” 

“Is that your goal in life now?” Steve asked, but he hooked his thumbs in his pockets in a way that made Sam notice his fingers. 

“Somebody's gotta.” 

“It's a bar,” Steve observed, glancing along the line of his shoulder, down just a little at Sam. 

“Yeah?” 

“I'm gonna have to carry you home, aren't I?” 

“That hurts,” Sam complained, and he bumped, playfully hard, past Steve, hand clapping left of center in his chest. It triggered another laugh, and he _felt_ Steve follow him. 

The upbeat blues seemed like the kind of thing that Steve would like, _should_ like a little, as far as Sam was concerned. He watched his face back over his shoulder as they comfortably, slowly, worked their way through the small crowd of people in the crowded bar. He could hear the age in the vocalist's tones and he murmured back to Steve. 

“Gotta pay your respect to your contemporaries,” he said. 

“Maybe I should,” Steve agreed, pocketing his hands again as he settled into a comfortable spot. To stand, not even thinking about taking one of the chairs. His arm did eventually find its way against a support pillar, and him standing there like made him seem a lot more in his element than he usually did in social outings. 

“Sure you haven't been drinking?” 

“Not enough,” Steve said, teeth showing in a grin that would've earned some lesser men some kind of retaliation. 

“Oh yeah, think you're special,” Sam said. He didn't think it was what little perceptible trace of alcohol there was in his system when it felt like the rhythm was working its way underneath his skin. It was hard to avoid when watching these old guys—older than him, anyway—on the old stage, acting like they weren't a day over the best day. Maybe they weren't. No reason that day couldn't be it. He knew he was grinning again when he looked at Steve's face again. 

“What?” Steve prompted, holding back his own smile ineffectually. 

“You gonna dance?” he asked. 

Steve glanced around, evasive. 

“Don't think they're doing a lot of dancing here.” 

“You think they'd mind?” Sam said, jerking his head back to indicate the band. 

“Not at all,” Steve admitted. “But I don't dance.” 

“Why, afraid you're gonna have some fun before your centennial?” Sam asked, and he didn't mean to but he remembered the day they met again. What Natasha had said about a fossil. Maybe they were too hard on him. Probably not, not yet. 

“Yeah, that's it,” Steve agreed, conversational over the music. He glanced back at the band, but Sam knew it wasn't going to hold. 

“Fine, fine,” Sam said, lifting up his hands. He sighed, mostly as a way to catch his breath. He scanned his eyes across the patrons of the bar, considering. He chose a lonely-looking, nice girl. “Could go try to talk to her,” he said, but about the time he said so she answered a phone and moved back toward the door, fingertips guarding her free ear. “Well,” he said, not continuing. 

Steve followed the girl's progress with his eyes a little, but just for a fleeting moment before meeting Sam's eyes. Sam wondered if the focus was shyness or being direct. It was hard to tell with Steve, and he kept wondering if he wasn't a lot drunker than he was. Steve had been so pensive when he'd picked him up, but now the world seemed to come in through a different filter. That happened sometimes, and every time he talked himself down. 

“I've already got one person trying to set me up with every nice girl they see,” Steve commented. 

“Yeah? Who's that?” Sam asked, but he thought he knew. 

“Natasha,” Steve said without further elaboration. For a moment he looked back toward the stage, but Sam didn't think he was seeing it for a second. He saw his Adam's apple move a little, up and down. 

And Sam almost told him, but he didn't. He swallowed hard, biting back against what felt like dishonesty. He was going to have to tell him sooner or later, but it hadn't been a whole day yet. He could give her a chance to set things right her way. Whatever that was. He nodded to try and clear that sobering thought from his head just a little. 

“Yeah, okay. Just gonna have to put up with me then,” he said, to break his own silence. He leaned to the side, bumping his arm against Steve's just for a moment, affectionately, because he knew he was allowed to do that. 

To his surprise, there was a counterweight bumping back against him, and when Steve drew back he was watching him again, smiling like he almost definitely wasn't Captain America. Captain America didn't smile like that, Sam was pretty sure. Then he and Steve were swaying back and forth, arm to arm, subtly, to the rhythm of the music. 

“Yeah, I can teach you,” Sam offered. He felt that the offer was accepted even though their feet stayed almost perfectly still. 

Sam was completely certain that he was sober in the car. No way he would've gotten behind the wheel if he hadn't been sure his walking and the math and every normal indicator of judgment hadn't checked out. But he felt lighter than he should have and didn't wait for the usual small talk in the car as he followed Steve into his apartment building. Steve didn't object, either, and he knew he was gripped by a kind of treacherous hope that he'd been talking himself out of every few days for ages. 

At last, when they were right in front of Steve's door, reality threatened to catch up with him. He almost wished it would so he could stop watching the way one of Steve's shoulders pushed against the door not like a fireman but a fire-starter, sparking and making Sam jumpier than he ought to have been, trying to be cool and not fly off into conclusions. 

“You gonna shake my hand?” Steve asked him, instead of becoming less of a problem. Sam felt himself moistening his lips, pressing them together, a little too self-aware. There was no way Steve was referencing what he thought he was, but then he straightened his posture just a little and seemed to _wait_. 

Sam didn't know what to do for a second too long, and Steve looked down, his hand fumbling for a key. 

“No,” Sam said quietly, and that got Steve's attention again. His eyes on his. 

One of the dumbest things Sam Wilson had ever done in his life was jumping off a pier stomach-first when he was seven. It had taken forever once he'd made the leap, especially because there was the gouge of a fat splinter in his big toe. It'd come out soon enough, but he'd been distracted from the approaching ocean by the stinging. Still, he'd been almost flat, arms outstretched. It was the first time he'd felt like he was flying, but it was also the scariest thing that had ever happened to him until that point. When he hit the water, it was damn cold, and he hadn't been able to breathe. His sister, Sarah, had run from where she'd been in the surf to help him, trying to bail his ass out before a lifeguard could. He still wasn't clear on which one of them had saved him. 

Stupid, that kind of stupid, was almost certainly at play when he kissed Steve. 

The height difference wasn't that much, but it felt like a mile and that he was on his tiptoes. Despite feeling like he was reaching up way too high, he felt like he was dipping down with his lips, pulling them over Steve's gently but without an apology for the way they felt them. It wasn't the right kind of answer he was supposed to give that question. He knew it, it was impossible. 

But impossible things happened every day these days, and Steve was kissing him back. 

The only thing to do when Captain America was kissing you was to do it right back, and like that for a moment, back and forth like swaying to music, the temperature between them built. Then he felt the reluctance, the way Steve's hands sought to steady themselves. Or maybe that's not what it was—maybe Steve was grabbing at his shirt in the most polite way possible—but he had the feeling he knew what it meant. 

What it ought to mean. 

Steve couldn't get drunk. He wasn't drunk. Sam wasn't drunk either, and he knew better than to lean on even though shadow of an excuse to garner any favors. And he didn't think it was a favor. Steve wasn't cruel like that. But he broke the kiss and found that he'd been gripping the lapel of Steve's jacket, too. 

“You didn't have to do that,” Sam found himself saying softly. 

“You started it,” Steve said, and he was grinning and a bright shade of pink across his cheeks. 

“Yeah, well. I'd... better...” Sam said, because he really had to do the smart thing here. He knew the stupid thing probably wasn't even on the table. And he couldn't do that at all. Not when Steve didn't know the whole story. It all came flooding back. There was something he wasn't supposed to tell Steve, and he thought it might add a few numbers to the equation. 

“See you tomorrow?” Steve asked, and there was another laugh in there somewhere. 

And that promise was better than any other kind of plea or apology Sam could have gotten, might have expected. He walked down the steps and out to his car feeling less like he was walking on clouds and more like he was just able to lightly walk upon the ground. It wasn't all bad news, and it wasn't all good, but when he looked up he noticed that Steve turned a light on in his apartment and Sam stood there, briefly considering its nearby heat. 

\- - -

“Like this,” Steve explained when he adjusted the tiny baseball mitt on Silas' hand. The little boy tried moving his hand again and made a wrinkled nose face at it. 

“It's too tight,” he complained. 

“It's supposed to be that way so it'll protect the bones in your fingers,” Steve replied, gentle but not without the vague, eerie sense of the danger of it. Silas looked at him with widened, slightly alarmed eyes. He didn't seem to hold onto the fear for long when Steve's other hand gently gripped the fingers of his free hand. As quickly as he'd squeezed the child's hand, he dropped his own down against his knee where he crouched on the schoolyard. 

He almost managed not to notice the slight shadow that was cast over him when she came up behind him. 

“Captain Rogers?” Mindy asked no matter how many times he told her that she didn't have to call him that. That happened a lot. “There's a call for you.” 

Steve looked up and back behind his shoulder at his coworker and gently touched Silas' shoulder before indicating that he could go back to tossing his ball—practicing. 

“It's your girlfriend,” Mindy said continued as she led him inside the school and the kids weren't all in earshot. She smiled, pleasantly scandalized by the looks of it. “Didn't know you had one,” was as far as the teasing went. She handed Steve the phone and leaned over the counter in the reception area to mash the button to take the phone off hold, as if Steve couldn't have figured it out. He appreciated the thought but was relieved when she gave him some space to find out if his only reasonable suspicion was correct. 

“Hello?” he asked, resisting the urge to formally identify himself. 

“Hey, Steve,” Natasha answered on the other end of the line. He could hear wind whipping softly, hissing through her microphone. 

“Hi,” he said, frowning, not sure if he was allowed to identify her by name. His brow furrowed tightly. 

“Sorry for calling you at work, but you didn't answer your phone,” she continued, as if nothing at all were strange. He wondered if her voice was a little hoarse or maybe she was just keeping a little quiet. 

“Yeah?” he asked her, not quite sure why he wanted her to confirm an apology. It felt a little unkind, but this conversation was already unsettling him. 

“What is it?” he asked, not quite making a pause where her name was supposed to go. 

“I need you to come home,” Natasha said, and he could tell that the way it brightened she was trying to give a charming explanation for her cover. If she was in trouble, he wouldn't have denied her that cover for even a second, but he sighed anyway. He didn't think that half the things Natasha treated as necessary were even close to it. But then, she was probably of the same opinion in reverse. 

“Where's that? Because I'm not sure—”

“It's not a code, Steve. I need you to come by your apartment. I didn't need a key, but...” 

“That's really rude,” Steve informed her, lowly, just because it was. 

“Well, I don't think that's going to be high on your priority list of things you want to scold me for when you get here, Rogers,” Natasha said, and she sounded surprisingly calm about it. Even pleasant. If it was feigned, he couldn't figure out why. 

“You're at my apartment,” Steve repeated, knowing that this conversation sounded weird given the context she'd given it—if Mindy was still listening—but that wasn't his fault. 

“Yeah, I'll explain when you get here. Can you get off work?”she asked, and it sounded normal. Like she'd asked him that a hundred times for similarly inane reasons. 

“What am I supposed to tell them?” he asked, not sure if he was playing along or not. “Don't think I get time off just because I'm your boyfriend.” 

“I think you get time off whenever you want it because you're Captain America,” Natasha said, but she didn't miss a beat before she continued. “Tell them you've got a family emergency.” 

“I don't... have one,” Steve said, a little like he was reminding her of sad news and not the other way around. The tone Natasha replied with would have struck him as just as flippant as anything else she'd said during their brief conversation had been, but he heard her sigh first. It made it seem a little different. 

“Funny, how that works out,” she said, and he realized it was a little pointed. She had a reason for her cover after all. 

As he left the school, Steve checked his phone. He saw the missed call from Natasha from a number he didn't recognize. Just the one, and there wasn't a voicemail or a text message to explain anything else. Natasha only explained when she was ready, on her terms. But the main reason he'd checked his phone was Sam. He brought the phone up to his ear as he neared where he'd parked his bike, listening to it ring for him. He had to explain why he wouldn't stopping by that night, the way he'd planned. 

Entering his own apartment and finding a few bags stacked one one top of the other by the door—just a few—he realized that she was planning on staying for a while. It seemed like heavy travel for Natasha, but what did he know? Those kinds of idle observations faded quickly from his mind when he looked up to see what was happening in the rest of his apartment. 

Metal on metal and soft as could be, Natasha wielded scissors. One of the kitchen chairs had been moved to another part of his home, one in plain view, and Natasha was cutting Bucky's hair—making the final, stylistic adjustments which seemed absurd and impossible even from Steve's baffled, slowly catching up viewpoint. 

He heard Bucky breathe in deeply, and they met each other's eyes. Steve felt his heart pumping in his throat. 

Natasha circled around again as if she hadn't been aware of the door opening at all. She only lifted her gaze when she stood behind Bucky and the chair. 

“I told you,” she said softly, and he wondered if that was the closest he was going to get to an apology. Only it wasn't an apology he was interested in. His mouth hung open and there weren't words that would come slow enough to actually come out. 

“I looked for you,” he said—Bucky said, not Steve, because Steve still couldn't find those same words. “I looked for you because I read about James Buchanan Barnes, and I knew that I had to save you. It was the first time I'd done anything because I had to in a long time. I had to be.... someone... once. And I found... you. But I couldn't find you, so I found her. You're both still targets, somewhere in the Asset's mind.” 

Steve's eyes pried away only for a brief second to glance at Natasha. She was eying Bucky again. Apparently this was strange to her, too. But then she moved and Steve noticed the way she put the scissors in a place he knew she thought she could access faster than the man in front of her, beside her. Then he fingers touched his arm made of flesh and blood through one of Steve's towels draped around his shoulders, covered in varying lengths of dark strands of hair. 

“You're okay,” she said. “You found him. See? He's not a target. He's your friend Steve.” 

Steve noticed the way she was smiling, even though he knew she had to be afraid. Bucky's eyes didn't divert from Steve, but he nodded. He reached up with his metal hand and gripped the towel, pulling it away. Hair fell onto the floor, but Steve didn't care. 

“I'm sorry,” Bucky said, and it sounded both distant and earnest. 

“No,” Steve breathed, and he saw his best friend standing in front of him with only a hair or two out of place. He moved around the furniture to stand in a clear space with Bucky. “No, Buck—”

“I'm not—” Bucky replied. It seemed like it was supposed to be a full statement. 

“I know who you are,” Steve insisted, stubbornly. Bucky stared at him again, and he thought he saw the spark of an argument there. 

“I don't,” was the only one that came. “But I knew—I know—” Bucky said. He was stumbling over words and Steve almost felt that he should have stumbled, moving toward him. He wrapped his arms around him. 

“I've got you, Buck,” Steve promised, and as he held onto him for a moment, he finally glanced at Natasha. He didn't want to scold her. He wanted to thank her, but he didn't know how. 

\- - -

They stayed. Natasha hadn't really meant to. She had thought that it would take care of itself, that her weeks-long secret keeping would rip away the veil of trust that Steve Rogers had placed on her. It wasn't much of a plan, but it had seemed like the sensible thing to assume, to count on. Steve was honest, and he wasn't supposed to trust people like her. For his own good. 

But apparently bringing his best friend back to him only got her more embedded. But Steve wasn't a target. He was a friend. 

She should have left while he was still standing there in his living room, holding onto Bucky. A successful transfer, and maybe he wouldn't have really noticed for a while. He would have let her go. But she'd stood there and watched them, feeling the way it pulled at her mouth enough to make her reach up and brush her knuckles against her lips. Then she'd knelt down and started brushing the dampened strands of hair into her cupped hand. She'd found a vacuum cleaner and worked out how to turn it on the same way she'd have figured out a computer system she'd never seen before. And just like that, she stayed, too. 

Bucky seemed to feel safest when he slept tucked away in a tight space, so she spent an afternoon pushing a couch up against a cleared off wall in Steve's bedroom, by the window. The window worried her, but Steve didn't seem worried. Bucky never said anything about it either, and he never once tried the window at night. 

Maybe he wanted to stay. She didn't know how he could want something like that, knowing the battles he must be fighting in his mind—friend, foe, target, temptation, war, weakness, blood, belonging. 

But maybe that was just in her head. 

The things that were in Bucky's head woke him up screaming some nights. It wasn't a petrified scream so much as a roar that gave way to more helpless fear only in the aftershocks, whimpers that he tried to hold back in his throat. And sometimes Steve wouldn't let her close—if Bucky was lashing out—but every time she let herself into the bedroom without an invitation. Other times, there was no kind of restraint needed, and the only thing to do for Bucky was to remind him that he was human. Most of the time, Steve just used water—glasses of cool water, cloths filled with warm. Her own methods had been more drastic, more elaborate, but Steve's just left her approaching the end of the couch and standing by it as if it were a wall. Bucky seemed to treat it like one—a cage he couldn't leave. 

“Will you stay?” Bucky asked one night, drawing Natasha's sleepy attention back from absentmindedly watching the doorway for when Steve would return with what he'd gone to get. It wasn't a plea, and she noticed how even his breathing had become when she looked at him. She reached up and tucked her hair back behind her ear, just a movement to break the incredible stillness of the question. She realized that she was leaning a little against the end of the sofa, hips bracing some of her body weight while yet more of it moved back and forth between the balls of her feet and her toes. 

“I don't know,” Natasha replied, just above a whisper. There wasn't much hesitation in her answer. She couldn't give him another one, but a tension settled deep in her jaw. She breathed in and out, steadying. She hoped that it wasn't the wrong answer, that it wasn't some kind of threat. She watched Bucky's eyes, not betraying her nerves for what they were. Her hands played along the couch's arm gently, even though she was painfully aware that if his metal fingers reached out abruptly that he could crush bones. 

“I should stay,” Bucky said, less a question. It wasn't a strong assertion either. 

“Yeah, you should stay,” Natasha tried to reassure him. She nodded toward the door. “Steve, he... cares about you. A lot.” She glanced down to her own hands, moving back and forth to meet one another and spreading out along the same line. “You're his best friend.” 

“I'm not who he thinks I am. I'm not what he thinks I am.” 

“You don't know what he thinks,” Natasha said, a little flippantly. She shrugged a little, feeling her hair swing, ticking her neck. 

“He doesn't understand,” Bucky repeated, a little more insistently. It brought Natasha's gaze back up, fixing it fast. 

“I think he understands more than you think,” Natasha said. She didn't know what Bucky understood. He was quiet so much of the time. She didn't know if he'd always been like that or if he couldn't speak sometimes. She smiled tightly for him. 

“I'm not Bucky Barnes. I don't remember who Bucky Barnes is. I just... know he'd want me to be here for him,” Bucky said, tilting his head indicatively this time. He looked down and began to grip, to knead at his lightweight blanket. 

“Sometimes that's all we can do. Our best. What we think we _should do_ ,” Natasha agreed. At least, she thought it was mostly agreeing. 

“You understand,” Bucky announced, glancing up. He went still in his fidgeting, still gripping tightly at the edge of the cloth in his hands. 

“Maybe.” 

“You understand. We're the same. You understand what I—” Bucky was trying to explain, getting frustrated, breathless. 

Natasha nodded a little eagerly. If it made him feel better, she'd agree. Maybe it was true. She realized that she might need to give him a little more than that. 

“Yeah. Yeah, I... understand,” she agreed. She could accept those terms. She didn't know if it meant that she'd stay, but that wasn't what he needed to know for now. 

The second week of November came before Natasha thought about making up her mind. She usually only thought about her covers, her loyalties, when seasons of change were coming. It came a little less dramatically but just as unexpected when the ground began to move beneath what she thought she was doing. 

On the front of Steve's refrigerator there was a small assortment of magnets. Specifically, there were three orphaned pieces of magnetic poetry that ran along the top of a thin piece of a yellow legal pad, keeping it stuck in place. _'smooth said you'_ above the unfinished grocery list. She hadn't really made note of it. That was a dangerous thought. She was getting sloppy. She stared at the little magnets and brushed her fingertip just along the edge of _'you'_. Her head tilted far to the right as she grinned at them and wondered. There was some kind of story in front of her, and she didn't see it. Now that she was wondering, it got the better of her curiosity. 

“Steve, where did these come from?” she asked, matter of fact. Like she had a small part of a right to them, a right to know. 

Steve glanced up from the newspaper he was reading—a real, tangible newspaper. There was a smudge of blue-gray newsprint along the knuckles of his left hand. She saw the brief furrow in his brow as he looked past her. Her seemed confused so she gestured to them, tiny pantomime of Wheel of Fortune style. She almost asked him if he knew what Wheel of Fortune was. She restrained herself. 

“Oh!” Steve said, and she saw the light brighten in his eyes, the recognition. He smiled, and she could tell it was a lying smile, one of his pitiful attempts to keep a secret. “They're not mine,” he said, eyes wandering back down to his reading. 

Natasha tried not to scowl when a better, fuller explanation wasn't offered to her. Just because he didn't lie very much, just because he was terrible at it when he did, didn't mean that he wasn't evasive. Maybe she was teaching him too well. 

She began to pick off the magnets, tugging the piece of paper down with her other hand. She really hoped that it wasn't out of spite that she rearranged their order when she put them back without the paper. She hoped it didn't run that deep that Steve's fridge now said: _'you said smooth'_. She exhaled sharply. She didn't have any trouble admitting that it sounded a lot less funny that way. 

The list made a soft sound between two fingers as she held onto it and walked around around the table to take a seat by Steve. He turned at the waist to look at her, back over his shoulder. 

“What are you doing?” he asked her, conversationally. He craned his neck, remembering to be curious.

“Grocery list,” she said with a bit more emphasis than was necessary. She showed him the piece of paper and sniffed outwardly as she smiled. She knew he was distracted, but he could do better. She'd seen it. “Getting rusty, Rogers,” she warned him. 

“Yeah, I know. Sorry, I was—” He popped the newspaper a little to align it a little higher. It seemed to invite her to look over his shoulder, so she planted the heel of her free hand against the back of his chair and did. The paper was opened to the page that was more than half occupied by puzzles at inane non-news. It surprised her a little bit that Steve was looking at it, but she frowned at it and concentrated, wondering what he wanted her to see. “Crossword puzzle,” he said up at her after a moment at an angle that made her able to feel the vibration of his voice across her skin. He was getting familiar and she could feel it happening, but maybe that had happened a long time ago. 

“There's no writing on it,” she observed evenly, leaning forward a little, a casual rocking of her weight. She took a deeper breath, not knowing if it felt safer or more dangerous or if it had no real value at all. She hadn't trusted anyone in a while, but that was becoming a less and less likely cover story. 

“I like to go through the clues and see if I know what they're talking about. Vocabulary's easy, and some of the history stuff I've got—lived through it or read about it in school—but some of it's stuff to put on my list,” Steve explained. 

“You still have that thing?” Natasha asked through a chuckle, but it was rhetorical. She tilted her head to change the angle of her eye contact with him as she kept standing behind. “But why don't you write on it?” Less rhetorical. 

“Don't need to,” Steve said, as if he were completely convinced that it made sense. Natasha felt her eyebrows lifting up, but she didn't comment until she lifted her hand from where it rested, just shy of between his shoulder blades, and rested the same forearm across his shoulder. She leaned in the opposite direction to look down over his shoulder, not quite cheek to cheek. 

“You work a crossword puzzle, but you're too environmentally-friendly to write on it,” she observed. He didn't answer with anything but a small shrug which she didn't let upset the position she'd taken. “You're an old man, Steve.” 

“And you continue to be surprised.” 

“Nothing surprises me.” 

“Right, right. I forgot.” 

Natasha didn't know what she was testing or if she was testing anything, if she was trusting an already proven weight. Steve didn't squirm, didn't shy away as her arms acted like a scarf draped across his shoulders, and when she set the yellow sheet of paper down right on top of his newspaper, he still didn't seem to mind. 

“You think you can mark on that?” 

“Maybe,” Steve said, and she thought that he was actively trying not to move her when he let the yellow sheet fall into his lap and folded the newspaper up to set it aside. He picked up the grocery list to examine it. “What do you want me to put on it?” 

“Anything you want,” Natasha replied smoothly. 

“That's a pretty broad list.” 

“I'm still pretty sure you can afford it.” 

“I know, just—” Steve said, and she didn't know what he was considering as she watched him review the list with the assistance of his moving thumb. “Are you hiding here, Natasha?” he asked, as if that were a normal part of conversation. Maybe between them it was, or at least it should be. 

“What do you mean?” Natasha asked, and then she felt herself holding onto the excessively casual, familiar, close posture like a lifeline. 

“I just can't imagine that you want to be staying here doing my grocery shopping for me. Don't you have... something you'd rather be doing?” Steve asked, and she could hear him almost falter more than he did. It was an offer, genuine concern, and of course it would always be. She'd passed up anything as simple as him telling her that he wanted her gone. For that to have happened, she would have needed him to keep not trusting her. But he did, and that meant she had to answer his question. 

“What if this is the cover I want?” she suggested. And it was so honest that she almost held her breath. It wasn't really an answer, but it was completely true. What if. 

“I can keep an eye on him. And I think he's trying to keep on me. You don't have to worry about me not—” Steve tried to tell her, but he struggled for the right words. 

“You're telling me Bucky's not something that'll make you compromise?” 

“No, he's not. He's not because he's... my priority. Not an interruption.” 

“That's really... kind of you,” she told him, but then she saw him start to furrow his brow in a way that worried her a little. She didn't want him to withdraw, so she quickly cleared her throat. “But for me, I just... think he knows me. I'm... somebody new to whoever he is now, and I think I get it.” 

“Good,” Steve said, and she could tell there was a whole conversation hidden behind that single word. But she wasn't going to make him have it until he was ready. Natasha rested her cheek against her hand while Steve jotted something else down onto the list. Then he looked up at her with a sudden start of memory. “Oh, since you're gonna be here, I should ask you. Thanksgiving's coming up, and I—do you think that Bucky'd... be alright if we took him to Sam's? He invited me, beginning of October.” 

“Yeah,” Natasha said, voice low and considerate. She straightened her back a little and dropped her hand. “Yeah, I think that'd... be nice.” 

And she might have claimed that the order of events from there was fuzzy, but she'd have been lying. But she did lie. She didn't know what she'd have said exactly if someone had asked her for a debriefing, for her reasoning in what she did next. She'd been moving to stretch the muscles in her back, a lazy evening kind of body language with no future or follow-through intent. But as she'd breathed, she moved closer with a lazy smile, and he didn't pull away. 

Kissing someone because she wanted to wasn't a regular occurrence. In fact, the last time she'd had a similar experience, she'd been kissing Steve on the cheek. That'd been back at the beginning of the summer. But she knew as well as anyone that kissing him on the mouth meant something else, and she did it anyway. She felt him kiss her back, his hand at her waist, catching her. She might heave deepened it—blood and belonging moving through her a little quicker than they had in a while. But then it struck her, realization that would have widened her eyes if she hadn't already gotten them too near closed. 

She broke the kiss and stood up to her full height and shook her head to clear it. 

“I'm sorry. Wow, Steve, I'm... really sorry,” she said, and she knew he'd been kissing her back, but she didn't want to make him explain that to himself. She didn't know for sure, and it was none of her business really, but she'd told Sam when she first got back to town. They were good for each other, and she had a feeling that if she hadn't been there that there wouldn't have been a question. Maybe there would have been, but there'd have been one less than the one she'd just asked. And it was another reason she should have been already gone. 

“Natasha—” Steve called after her, and she knew while she watched his eyes that he was weighing it back and forth. It wasn't easy, unencumbered surprise. There was something else and familiarity weighing themselves out, but it wasn't just up to him and she knew better. 

She shook her head and went back through the apartment, finding a backpack and throwing in just a couple of random things that she'd been using during her stay. It wasn't that she needed them, and it wasn't that she ever really packed when she ran away. But she wasn't running away. That would have meant that she'd been staying here in the first place, but this had only ever been a place where she had been making a stop until she was sure Steve wasn't in danger. 

She lied. She knew she lied, all the time, and Steve wasn't that kind of guy no matter how much she could get him to stumble his way through. No matter what he'd do for her. She tugged on a jacket and slung the bag over her shoulder. When she caught her reflection, she thought she looked younger than she was. Maybe that was a start. 

She was halfway down the stairs when she heard the door open again. 

“Natasha,” Steve's voice followed her, but it wasn't the inflection she expected. It was an order instead of a plea. For just a second, she was angry—it'd be easy to be angry—and she looked up from where she stood. Bucky was pushing past Steve, and they made it a point not to physically restrain him when it wasn't necessary. Little things like that seemed to be the insurance that Bucky would continue to get better, wouldn't lose control. 

“Bucky—” Natasha tried with a sigh, shaking her head. “James,” she said, because she knew his full name and wondered if that might make a difference. “Go back inside,” she said, gesturing up the stairs, but he kept moving to the top of them. “Go back inside,” she repeated, trying to make her point by turning and walking away from him. She heard Steve's feet begin to move after him, too. It didn't even occur to her that he'd make it out of the small apartment building. 

She looked back again, across the street as she stepped up on the curb, when she heard the almost normal argument coming out the door. 

“You have to come inside. It's not safe for you to be out here by yourself,” Steve told Bucky. Bucky shook his head and kept trudging forward, though he did pause to look at him. 

“I won't be by myself. I'll be with her.” 

“Bucky,” Steve demanded, and Natasha couldn't help hearing, couldn't help her chest aching as she looked back and forth, trying to decide the easiest way to make her trail go cold. But if Bucky was determined, his training wasn't going away. His natural instincts had been mostly rooted out, torn from him, and replaced with others. She wouldn't get away that easily, not without him consciously agreeing to let her. She shouldn't have let it go this far. 

“I'm just gonna look after your girl,” Bucky said, and it was something between pleading and insistence. 

“Come on,” Natasha ordered with a waving gesture for Bucky to come follow her. “Let's just... go for a walk, okay?” she bargained, trying to tell Steve without telling him that wherever she was going, wherever she was going to go to get out of his life, to let him have one after SHIELD and everything they'd dirtied his hands in, she wasn't going to take Bucky with her. But she didn't see a good option but to take him for now, to let him believe what he needed to. She didn't think he'd take feeling abandoned, if he'd decided he could feel that way. 

She had to assume that Steve understood, because he didn't follow Bucky when Bucky crossed the street. It was a quieting time of night, so there weren't any cars for him to avoid. Natasha glanced up as he moved into step beside her. She'd felt a droplet or two of water hit her hand. 

“Where are we going?” Bucky asked, hands pushed into pockets. She wondered if he was trying to hide them—specifically the one made of metal. She didn't know if it would occur to him. 

“Going for a walk,” she said, as she led him out of Steve's neighborhood. 

The rain picked up as they moved, but they kept going. 

“You okay?” she asked him, when the rain began to fall heavily enough to make a sound and pool in dips in the sidewalk and street. 

“Yeah,” he said, voice a little horse. He looked at her without a lot of clarity, but there was something that counted for focus. 

“We're going to see a friend,” she explained, only when they were far enough from Steve's mixed-zoning neighborhood for the streets to be suburban, empty, quiet enough that it didn't make her think twice to linger for a few steps down the center of the streets they crossed. She quickened her step a little, remembering exactly where she was going. She glanced at her phone that she fished from her pocket as her hair began to drip. She wondered if she should call ahead but decided not to. She glanced up at Bucky again, checking, but he seemed indifferent to the downpour. 

\- - -

Sam glanced at his phone again on the counter. His kitchen smelled thickly of autumn herbs and cranberries and there were four printed out recipes from the internet laid down in a different section than his phone. He sighed, knowing that he should probably give it up. He'd seen Steve—a lot, a lot more than he'd expected to when Natasha and Bucky had started living with him all of the sudden. He didn't resent it, he couldn't. But there were some things he was just going to have to let go. 

He thought he already had, but as it turned out, as optimistic as he tried to be there were still things to give up. 

He was thus as engaged as he could be in the art of melancholy, feeling-sorry-for-yourself stuffing preparation when he heard the delicate rhythm of a knock at the nearby door. He wiped off his hands on a checked dish towel and went over to it, peering through the reflection to see two familiar-sized figures waiting shoulder to shoulder on the other side. One or both seemed to have folded arms. He opened up. 

He glanced at Bucky, eyes widened. He wouldn't have recognized his hair or his eyes, but the arm was kind of a giveaway. He met Natasha's eyes, nodding. They both had soaking wet hair, but there was enough of of an overhang to keep them protected for a moment while he got up the nerve to let the Winter Soldier into his house. He just needed that—one moment. 

“You know I got a front door?” 

“Sam,” Natasha said, and she glanced up at Bucky. “Bucky, this is Sam. He's Steve's friend.” 

Bucky nodded in a recovering muscle-memory kind of way—formal and ill-fitting. Sam returned the gesture slowly, carefully, then looked back at Natasha. 

“New sidekick?” he asked her dryly, but then he was moving back to make room for them to enter. 

“Can we come in?” she asked, even though he thought he was making it obvious. 

“Yeah, you can come in. Get in out of the rain,” Sam insisted with a rotation of his lower arm, ushering them inside. Natasha came first and Bucky followed. It was weird thinking of an absolutely terrifying force of death as Bucky, but Steve did and Sam could almost see it in the way he kept keeping his hands stuffed down into the pockets of some kind of double-breasted jacket thing he had gotten somewhere. It fit. One or both of them had been buying him clothes, Sam guessed. 

“I'll explain,” Natasha told him. Sam noticed the way Bucky started sniffing a little rapidly, almost like he wanted to sneeze but with no sign of ever actually getting around to it. Breathing the air after getting a few fresh breaths of his own, he didn't really need to ask. The smell of seasoned food—it must be kind of overwhelming. 

“I'm making a test run for what I'm making next week. For... you guys,” he said, tentatively, making some friendly and unrealistic and strange assumptions, “and for the meal they have down at the VA. You guys are welcome to help me try it out, but it'll be a little while.” 

“That's really nice of you, Sam,” Natasha said. He thought she over overreaching, but she touched the edge of his counter and then inched backward toward the table to get back out of the way—he guessed. 

“Don't mention it,” he said with a warm smile he hoped would be perceived as dismissive (which it wasn't) or awkward (which it might have been?). 

“Bucky, could Sam and I speak privately?” Natasha asked with a slightly higher intonation of her voice. 

Bucky nodded. Then he glanced around, and Sam probably shouldn't have thought so, but there was something a little exciting about watching him think, watching him work stuff out. It seemed a little too good to be true, but he could use something that seemed like nice incredible news instead of the world-shaking kind. 

“May I use your television?” Bucky asked, and Sam almost laughed at the even formality of it. 

“'Course you can. All you gotta do is get the remote on the coffee table and—” he told him, pausing for a second to think through the simplest number of steps. 

“I understand the way it works,” Bucky said, and the sentence seemed a little broken in his throat, but he was holding a conversation. Sam didn't think he meant for it to be rude. He guessed it made sense. Guy could fly modern planes. 

When they were alone in the kitchen, Sam went back to working on the food. Now he had guests to feed, and he wanted to give Natasha a second. When he glanced over at her as he pushed the oven door closed, she leapt at the opportunity to talk so fast that it made him feel a little bad for not prompting it even sooner. 

“I'm sorry about this,” she said. She glanced in toward the living room where the television had since begun murmuring lowly. “I didn't know where else to go.” 

“Hey... Natasha. You're... my friend... too,” Sam offered, carefully, in case it was the kind of offer she wanted rescinded. 

“Are you sure about that?” she asked, smiling. 

“Hey, if that's a threat, I think it's a little rude. I mean, here you are, standing, dripping in my kitchen, and I'm offering you food. Don't they teach manners in spy school?” 

“Only the kind that get you close enough to spy and kill,” Natasha replied, but he could tell somehow that she was joking. “I kissed Steve.” 

“What? Natasha, you don't have to—I know—” Sam said, and his throat did tighten a little because the conversation definitely had taken an awkward turn. She wasn't telling him anything he didn't know, couldn't reasonably assume, and he thought she had to know that. “You don't have anything to explain to me. What's going on? Did you and Steve have a... falling out you're warning me about? Because I don't... really think I can help being there when he falls. That's... kind of what I do now.” 

“Sam,” Natasha said insistently, and she didn't seem to express any discomfort as she slipped off her shoes and her bared feet began to touch the wet fabric of her pants and the floor. “Don't sell yourself short like that with him. Really, you... shouldn't. I told you—you're good for him.” 

“But he wants you, right? I mean... who wouldn't?” Sam asked her, and he really wished there were an easy out here. He had never understood why Natasha initiated the conversations she did, even in the time he'd spent with her. 

“That's sweet,” she said, and he thought she meant it. “But I'm... not what either of you need. I'd be gone already, except—” 

Sam sighed and looked at her more evenly, expecting a puzzle but instead he just got a helpful tilt of her head that indicated Bucky. 

“You... feel responsible for him?” Sam guessed. Shot in the dark, but lo and behold she nodded. 

“I was going to leave—because I should—but he followed me. And I can't... let him follow me. I think he's gotten a little attached. He thinks we're... the same,” Natasha explained. 

“Are you?” 

“A little bit,” Natasha agreed with a nod, looking down and shrugging a little. 

“What do you want me to do?” he asked, gauging the situation. He glanced at his phone, still silent on the counter. 

“Just keep him distracted,” Natasha said, and it took a moment but he realized it was another joke. At least, it came across that way. She sighed so heavily he wondered if she'd been trying for something else. 

“Listen—” he requested. Natasha looked up at him, eyebrows lifting just slightly to indicate that she was. “Who are we to decide what someone needs? We can make... some kinds of calls... about what's just plain stupid or what's best, but Steve's not like you, and he's not like me, and he's not like Bucky. We've all got our own baggage to bring to the table, and maybe... maybe I am good for him.” He hoped so, and most of the time he felt like he was. He loved him, no way around it anymore, and even if it never really went anywhere he was going to love him in the ways that could count, in the ways he needed. It was too late to do anything else, even if he sometimes wished for some higher-functioning self interest. “But maybe you are, too,” he said. That seemed to make her perk up a little, if only to argue with him. 

“You _are_ what he needs,” she confirmed, looking away again with a breathy exhale. 

“And I seem to recall you and me doing a pretty good tag team—taking care of him when he didn't know what to do,” Sam reminded her. She'd been bleeding out slowly when she'd backed him up with a rocket launcher. Pretty impressive woman, and when he thought about that he couldn't help being a little taken with her. And he knew she cared about Steve, and that mattered, too. 

Natasha shook her head and reached up, rubbing briefly at her temple before letting her arm fall limp. 

“Just... stay. For tonight. Don't worry about anything, and we'll... work it out,” Sam offered. Natasha looked at him again, curiously. She was still making a few small puddles in his kitchen floor with her clothes. He wondered if her heavy, soaked hair was responsible for at least one of them all on its own. “Go in there—you know where the bathroom is. Get a shower, have some dinner, and we'll... figure it out.” He thought she nodded, but she was keeping her eyes so hard-focused that he wondered. He considered it for a long moment and stepped right in front of her, lifting his hand and reaching in. If he made a wrong call, he knew he might be drawing back a stub, but it turned out that she didn't seem to mind when he patted her shoulder, up high and near her neck. He felt it when she nodded again and turned silently to go back toward the guestroom. 

\- - - 

Steve hadn't gotten used to being comfortable. Ever, really. It wasn't what he expected or felt was necessary, but when he did start to feel something that he thought he might have called comfort, he realized why Natasha seemed so scared of it. It felt like complacency that clouded a person's senses and then left them open and raw when something changed. 

He trusted her. He trusted that she wouldn't do anything stupid with Bucky. Not again. He knew that she wouldn't if only because she didn't want to carry that much baggage, because she was scared of it. He couldn't say he blamed her. Following them on foot, chasing them, would have seemed crazy and something about it just seemed pointless. And going back inside felt like defeat, but it was the only alternative. 

It took him a little while to work up the nerve to pick up the phone. There was only one person he was going to call. 

“Sam?” he asked, when Sam answered. “I know I was supposed to call you earlier, but Natasha, she—and Bucky's... with her. Gone, and I know she won't take him far but—”

“Man, Bucky's right here. Calm down and just... come over, will you? Take your time and come, but... come over.” 

“She brought Bucky to your house?” Steve asked, and he wasn't sure if it was deadpan. He blinked a few times, but he was almost immediately going for his keys. 

“Yeah. He's in my living room watching TV. Seems like a nice kid. Come over, though, before... well, before anything happens to me, right?” Sam asked. Steve knew he was joking, but that didn't stop there being at least some hint of a question in his mind. 

There wasn't another sensible solution, so he took his bike through the lessening rain. It went from a good, steady pour to a sprinkle as he made his way to Sam's neighborhood. Pulling up into his driveway, he couldn't help noticing the way the house seemed even more aglow than usual. Maybe it was that the air was cool, and Sam's house seemed like it'd be a warm place when something cold—like guilt—had settled into the pit of his stomach. He parked his bike in the driveway and jogged up to the front door. After he'd knocked, he brushed his fingers back through his dampened hair—close enough. 

Natasha answered the door. 

Steve stood there and wondered if the rain had completely stopped, staring at her standing there in the door frame, holding open the screen door as if she already knew its weight. Her hair was only damp and combed through, hanging in curls the way they had been the last time he'd been with her in Sam's house. She wore too-big cloth pants with the drawstring knotted tight to hold them at her waist. A bi t-shirt that he'd seen Sam wearing before covered her from the hips up. 

“Sorry,” she said, when he didn't speak or step inside. “I had to clear my head,” she said, and he could tell that it was supposed to be an ingratiating tone. If it was exaggerated for effect, he wasn't quite in the mood to tell. He smiled, tightly, but it wasn't as warm as it usually was. She'd scared him a little, and she hadn't given him much credit. 

“Did you?” he asked her, dryly but not entirely ready to laugh at the joke. 

“Yeah. Maybe?” she asked, nodding for him to come inside. He finally did step up into the house, shedding his jacket and his shoes—habit. 

“There he is,” Sam said as Natasha led him into the cramped dining room. The table wasn't much bigger than the one in the kitchen, but it was a little easier to spread out enough food for four. It was set for four and Bucky was already waiting. Steve couldn't help smiling when he saw his smile. He looked up to met Sam's eyes, shrugging with a question. “Yeah, I know. Thanksgiving's not 'til next week, but hey—my life hasn't been normal since I met you.” 

“Was it normal before? _Falcon_ ,” Natasha pointed out as she took a seat with an easy lightness in her movement. She looked comfortable again, almost calm. If it was an act, Steve thought it was a good one, that she was doing it for a good reason. And he knew a little what that was like as he worked his way back into the notion of being as completely fair as he could be. Faking it until you made it wasn't an entirely foreign philosophy to him. 

“That was a job,” Sam said with wry emphasis. 

Natasha looked at him, and Steve was somehow relieved that they were focused that easily on one another in casual conversation. 

“No it wasn't,” she said—a compliment, from her. 

“Well, all I'm saying is that before I met _him_ ,” Sam said, nodding toward Steve as he kept talking to Natasha, leaning forward with his hands wrapped around the high back of his chair, “I didn't have wet Russians showing up at my backdoor.” 

Bucky cleared his throat loudly enough to be heard, and Steve didn't know if it was deliberate or not. He reached out and put his hand on his shoulder—just on the off chance, just in case. He realized when he glanced back toward Sam and Natasha that all three of them had fixed their eyes on Bucky. 

“He's not Russian,” Natasha said softly, with a smile, as she looked back up at Sam to resume. 

“My bad,” Sam agreed. “That's right,” he added, warmly, too. Steve saw the way he swallowed hard before he tried to meet Bucky's eyes. “Can tell me when I'm wrong, right?” he encouraged him. 

“It's... okay,” Bucky said, and Steve thought the hesitation sounded pretty typical. He let go of his shoulder after a short squeeze. 

“Sit down. You're holding up dinner,” Sam said to Steve. 

Steve looked at Bucky. He didn't look like he'd showered, but his hair was cow-licked in places that made him realize he'd had a towel taken to the top of his head. That was what he was looking at as he sat down. 

“So who goes first,” Sam said, holding up the white dish with the stuffing in it. “Not me. I'm the host.” 

“Bucky,” Steve said. 

“James?” Natasha questioned at the same time. 

“Okay, see. That's what I call cooperation,” Sam said, and he passed the dish to Steve to give to Bucky. Steve spooned out a half-serving and then gave the serving spoon to Bucky to do the other half, watching him carefully as he noticed Sam bound back up from his chair in the periphery of his vision. “Not Thanksgiving yet, so none of this formal stuff. Making me feel under-dressed,” he said. Steve heard the mechanical whirring of Sam adjusting a stereo, adjusting the music until it was low enough for conversation. 

When Bucky was served, Steve used the spoon to get his own serving and passed the dish over to Natasha whose nose was wrinkled—not about the food—as she served herself without looking down, pushing the bowl back toward Sam's plate. 

“It feels like a restaurant,” she complained, playfully, her grin turning wicked. Steve laughed at her, turning red, and she met his eyes, so satisfied that he didn't know whether he felt a little bad about giving in or not. But why should he? Maybe she was right. Maybe she was telling the truth. This was, to him, what feeling in the clear felt like. 

“Well, tell you what: next time you get to pick the music,” Sam promised.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from "American Pie" by Don McLean. The vague Biblical reference is from [the Beatitudes](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beatitudes#Biblical_basis). I really hope you enjoyed the story! This really mushroomed away from me and this is what we got.


End file.
